UCLA's Myles Jack is congratulated by teammate Jake Brendel after scoring one of his three first-half touchdowns Friday. ROD VEAL, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

PASADENA – I like to live by a saying “right is right.”

But now I’m not so sure anymore what is right, and does it really matter if I'm right if I have to be politically correct?

We’ve got all this business going on about the Washington NFL team’s nickname, and here I am at a UCLA football game, the Bruins players and coaches wearing war paint, a tomahawk down in the locker room as part of the whole ritual and I had no idea it was a war.

I thought it was just a football game.

Tomahawk? This might be a good night for Washington’s players to keep their helmets on.

UCLA did this a year ago in routing Arizona, but it got very little attention because no one wanted to talk about it later. Coach Jim Mora only applied a black strip above the UCLA logo on his shirt rather than be interviewed by a sideline reporter and come off looking like Crazy Horse.

It’s almost as if the Bruins understood what they were doing might not be considered politically correct, so they acted as if they didn’t understand English when quizzed by reporters. Not what I would expect from intimidating warriors.

Now I know it’s ridiculous to think of football as war when we have young men really fighting a war, but do I really need to point that out to UCLA leaders?

Or, am I overreacting?

Has UCLA lost perspective, or is this just the fun way the game is now played, motivating players to take no prisoners when they take the field?

I know Indians wore war paint to look more ferocious because I did a Google search. Is that why Washington fumbled on its first two possessions, the Bruins scaring the bejesus out of the Huskies?

Can I write bejesus, or is that blasphemous and not politically correct?

The Indians put black on their faces by mixing spit and animal fat with wild grapes, bark and ashes. The ferocious Bruins covered their faces with black makeup.

Is it politically correct for a public university to allow their football players to act like Indians to better motivate their “warriors?” What does Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott think about one of his schools going on the warpath?

“I think I really have to be careful as Commissioner to dictate political correctness,’’ Scott said. “It’s really hard to say what’s right or wrong here.”

He should have stopped right there.

“Football is tribal by nature,” Scott said. “It’s very aggressive and some say even violent. So I have to give some latitude and rely on the individual schools to decide what’s appropriate and politically correct.”

I’d ask Matt Barnes what he thinks, but I’m not sure I could print his response.

Barnes used a racial slur in a tweet after getting ejected for being a thug, apologized for the slur but now is saying, “You guys have to get used to it.’’

No, I don’t. That’s not right.

But I know if I write that’s not right, someone is going to suggest I have no business saying so because I’m not young, hip or the same race as the guy saying it.

The politically correct thing to do is probably just ignore it. But is that right being a columnist?

“It’s a word I guarantee you will be used out here on the court today,” Barnes told reporters. “It's a word that I've already heard in the locker room. It's not as big a deal as people are trying to make it.’’

That’s right; it’s everyone else’s fault.

So far everything Barnes has said is wrong. I believe it is a big deal with the attention the NBA gets and who might be listening or hearing what is said. It’s as big a deal as someone using a gay slur, or using a body part to describe a woman.

I also think it is not right for a writer, as one at ESPN has done, to let Barnes off the hook by explaining he had a tough life while growing up.

Boo hoo. He’s making millions to play a game for a living.

“(Barnes) might understand the depth, force and ugliness of that word as well as anyone in the NBA,’’ wrote ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne. “He has seen it and lived it firsthand.’’

She then referenced a 2001 story in the Register mentioning an attack by “skinheads’’ at Barnes’ high school in 1998. In one hallway the words, “Die Matt Barns Die,” were sprayed on the wall.

As Shelburne writes now, “It was a scary, disgusting act. And it wasn't the only time that Barnes, who is of mixed race, experienced such contemptible behavior.’’

What does any of that have to do with pushing another player on the court, getting ejected, using a racial slur and then justifying it later by explaining that’s just how he talks?

I know TV broadcasters who cuss and talk about their mothers, but they cannot do so on the air. Right is right. And they know that would be wrong.

But here I sit at a UCLA football game, undoubtedly a lot of people thinking it is really cool the way the Bruins put on their war paint and went into combat Friday night.

I just worry that in the long run we all know what happened to the Indians.

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